Reading Cho Seung-Hui
Writer and teacher Alexander Chee reads a story by the killer and interprets it as if it were a dream:
The story was overdetermined, in other words, and I might have tried to engage him in why. Things happened in a way that told you it was like a dream and had no relationship to anything except what the author wanted to have happen. The logic ruling the actions of the characters was a deeply held unconscious belief of the author’s about the way the world works. He was brutally teased, the papers report, by the kids of his high school, for being Korean, and for the way he spoke. The step-father in the story is the US, clearly, the mother is his parents, who immigrated and brought him with them from Korea. The dead father is Korea. But this is all visible through the enormous stereoscope that is the news. In a conference with the student, though, it would have to be a lot of questions, asked gently. And in the end there would be a lot I wouldn’t know. I’d have urged counseling, and in an extreme case like this, I’m sure I would have sought out the help of other faculty and administrators. I would have done, in other words, much what they did at Virginia Tech, and that is part of what’s disturbing. It would be an understatement to say I’m re-evaluating my strategies right now.
(Thanks, Sagal Abshir)
“Your sentences tell a story but they also tell people about your mind. What you say, how you say it, the order you make, it’s an ink fingerprint to the structure of your thoughts.”
The ink fingerprint of someone being processed by the prison system is a useful image here, and a lasting one. But what if Cho Seung-Hui’s writing had been completely bland, or even accomplished, with no hints of his potential to harm? In that case, would we have found (or manufactured) some hint in his writing anyway, all in a struggled effort to impose a narrative that helps us navigate something unthinkable?
Comment by Anita Varma — May 1, 2007 @ 7:22 pm